DEREK HATTON – officially the deputy leader of Labour-run Liverpool city council during the Militant era, but unofficially its leader – is sitting in his current office (Bike 2 Work scheme) in Dale Street.

DEREK HATTON – officially the deputy leader of Labour-run Liverpool city council during the Militant era, but unofficially its leader – is sitting in his current office (Bike 2 Work scheme) in Dale Street.

It’s bang opposite his former seat of power in the municipal buildings, where all hell was let loose between 1983 and 1987.

He is laughing. And I think he is laughing at the irony that he has ended up back where it all began, despite having reinvented himself more times than Madonna (panto, property developing, radio and much more besides – he’s also, for example, the former chairman of his son Ben’s online web design and development consultancy Rippleffect, which ECHO parent company Trinity Mirror bought in 2008, and which is still run by founder Ben).

But it’s a different Degsy today, not least because he’s a millionaire, while he seems to have more energy now than ever.

Maybe it’s all those gym visits. Maybe it’s the 27 vitamin pills the Scouse Duracell bunny pops each day. Or maybe the Botox has something to do with it.

Whatever it is, Derek Hatton doesn’t appear to have an off switch.

VIDEO: Derek Hatton recalls his days in the Liverpool Town hall during the Militant era

“I still don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up!” the human Tigger tells me.

Derek, you are 65.

“I know – I’m not even at half-time yet!”

Now that is a scary thought.

His office is also close to where so much council business used to be done: the Vernon Arms. And he says: “In the 1980s, every pub in Liverpool had a city treasurer and there would be a major debate about the city’s finances. It was unbelievable. The then ECHO local government editor Peter Phelps came out with a famous quote: ‘You can walk down Dale Street and almost taste the pre-revolutionary atmosphere’.”

Labour seized power of the city in May 1983, and Hatton says: “This was on the back of four years of Thatcher’s government, when £120m was taken from Liverpool, while, in the previous 10 years, the city had lost 44,500 jobs.”

The former deputy council leader bristles at labels like Militant and stresses that he and his colleagues were Labour councillors, and elected as such.

He then presents me with a list of what he says the new council did. It includes: 6,300 families rehoused from tenements, flats and maisonettes; 4,800 houses and bungalows built; 7,400 houses and flats improved, and the building of five new sports centres and three new parks.

But what about the brickbats, battles, conflicts and confrontations? Critics still ask about the cost of the Militant reign to the city, its people, reputation and image.

Hatton is not for turning: “The irony is that after we came to power we were absolutely lambasted by every newspaper in the country – and then, in 1984, we got record local election turnouts and increased our majority from three to 17. So the people of Liverpool, no matter what anybody said, saw they had a chance with us.

“People do criticise the way we reacted to that Tory government and said ‘Couldn’t you have sat down and talked to them?’ But every authority had tried to sit down and none got a penny, so we were the only ones to take action and, in 1984, get £20m back.

“We knew the government thought ‘We’ll defeat the miners then we’ll go for Liverpool’. But that doesn’t stop you going for all the victories you can get. The interesting thing is I know from conversations with various people that the Tories never believed in a million years that Kinnock was going to do their dirty work for them.”

Oh yes, Neil Kinnock. For Hatton and many others, the party in Liverpool was effectively over when the then Labour leader made that Party conference speech in October 1985, which talked about “the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council – hiring taxis to scuttle around a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.”

Today, Hatton says: “Between ’83 and ’85 our biggest enemy was the government and that’s who we defeated. People were voting for us. But after Kinnock made that speech the whole world changed overnight.

“Kinnock, more than anyone else at the time, let the people of Liverpool down. You can blame Thatcher, but you expected Thatcher to be like that. I still hold Kinnock more responsible than anyone for our downfall and for the downfall of the future of the city at the time.

“And it says a lot about the Labour Party nationally that it took 10 years from the time of getting rid of us to getting elected. What frightened Kinnock was that I spoke to thousands of people at meetings in places like Glasgow, Sheffield and Birmingham – and local authority leaders always wanted to be on platforms with me. They knew if they had a public meeting they could have it in a phone box. But the moment Kinnock made that speech they changed completely.”

It has always been stressed by Militant that issuing those 31,000 redundancy notices was a tactic to buy time, and, handing me a copy of the covering letter signed by himself and then council leader John Hamilton, he says: “Up until now I don’t think one single news outlet has printed or even made reference to this.”

Part of the letter, dated September 16, 1985, reads: “Obviously the steps we have had to take will cause concern and worry. However, this course of action provides the only way of providing wages and salaries until 18th December, 1985. Other steps would certainly result in the immediate cessation of payments and the cutting of services...Furthermore, this course of action gives the Government three months to negotiate with Labour representatives a just settlement to our financial crisis. If the Government recognises its responsibility then all notices will be withdrawn.”

A big “If” some might have said.

As for using taxis, Hatton doesn’t see what all the fuss was about: “We had a contract with Davy Liver – every Friday, for example, I’d get my council minutes brought to me by cab.”

And so to the loans taken out by the city council in the mid-1980s, which involved borrowing around £100million from Swiss and Japanese banks over 15 years with total repayments of about £157.5 million. These ended in 2001.

These rates, it was claimed, were better than those available in Britian, and, today, Hatton says: “They were paid back after 15 years? Then what a great deal we got! Seriously. The reality is that people have mortgages that last for 30 years.”

But what of the late John Hamilton, described by Hatton in his 1988 book Inside Left as “a nowhere man” who “often reminded me of Mr Magoo, the cartoon character, bumbling his way through life like a genial uncle”?

“I didn’t say he was a nowhere man. And I never called him Mr Magoo – I might have said other people called him that.”

I read him the passages from his book and he says: “I’m not going to claim I didn’t say it if it’s in there, but you can’t use that in isolation. The fact of the matter is I thought the world of John. He was a lovely man and he meant well.”

And regarding the words of 25 years ago, he adds: “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Well, Hatton was known as “The Mouth” – though he claims: “I never had people in any Liverpool ward telling me ‘Oh, you’re too flamboyant, robust and opinionated’. They said they loved the fact I was opinionated!”

Have you still got a short fuse, as mentioned in your book? “I suppose I have though I don’t think it’s quite as short as it was. I think it gets shorter when I talk about things in the ’80s! I blow and it lasts 10 seconds, but what I don’t ever do is bear grudges.”

Some people objected to the whole package, didn’t they, including the sharp suits? “As Labour leader, Michael Foot had been criticised for years because he wore a donkey jacket. All I said was anyone who went on television should have a suit and tie on and look smart. I just thought that was important if you were representing people.”

To this day, people refer back to the “dark days” of Militant and suggest the legacy was so damaging it took the city many years to recover.

But Hatton isn’t having it: “This city did have dark days but did we have anything to do with the closure of British American Tobacco, Schweppes, Crawfords, Jacobs, the docks or Cammell Laird? After we left, we became scapegoats and I can understand that. But I’d argue that if we hadn’t got to power it would have been much worse. People would still have been living in slums because new houses wouldn’t have been built.

“The significant thing since then is that from 1987 to 2011, if you think of all the city’s achievements, they almost all happened despite the local authority not because of it. I don’t think the local authority was very involved in Liverpool One. That and other things happened because they made sense financially.”

He adds: “Now you are actually getting (mayor) Joe (Anderson) and the local authority involving themselves in positive thinking. They are going to build 5,000 houses so you can start to see that they are creating jobs and doing things. It’s very unfortunate what they are doing in terms of cuts, but it’s a different world. If Joe said ‘I’m not setting this budget’ all they’d do is get officers to make even more cuts. It’s all very well using the same rhetoric as the ’80s but it’s a different world and people behave differently. We had 100,000 on one of our demos and there was one recently in Liverpool which attracted just 200. That’s the reality.”

Blimey, 100,000! Really?

Anyway, regrets? He has a few, including being unsuccessful in winning two particular arguments: “When Merseyside County Council was going, I thought we should then call ourselves ‘Greater Liverpool’, with the word ‘Merseyside’ becoming redundant.”

But what about the policy of ‘no redundancies’?!

He adds: “I also thought we should have approached Manchester Airport to ask ‘Why can’t Liverpool Airport be an annexe of Manchester Airport?’ Liverpool could have had a much bigger airport as a result. But by the reaction at the time you’d have thought I’d suggested Liverpool should play at Old Trafford!”

Ask Degsy...is there a question you’ve always wanted to ask Derek Hatton? Email paddyshennan@liverpoolecho.co.uk and see Friday’s ECHO for the best Qs and Degsy’s As.